Abstract
Parasites co-infecting hosts can interact directly and indirectly to affect parasite growth and disease manifestation. We examined potential interactions between two common parasites of house finches: the bacterium Mycoplasma gallisepticum that causes conjunctivitis and the intestinal coccidian parasite Isospora sp. We quantified coccidia burdens prior to and following experimental infection with M. gallisepticum, exploiting the birds’ range of natural coccidia burdens. Birds with greater baseline coccidia burdens developed higher M. gallisepticum loads and longer lasting conjunctivitis following inoculation. However, experimental inoculation with M. gallisepticum did not appear to alter coccidia shedding. Our study suggests that differences in immunocompetence or condition may predispose some finches to more severe infections with both pathogens.
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Data availability
The dataset analyzed during this study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Thank you to two anonymous reviewers for their comments on this manuscript.
Funding
This work was funded by NIH grant 5R01GM105245 as part of the joint NIH-NSF-USDA Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases program. Funding for E. Schuler was provided by a Virginia Tech Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship. C. Weitzman was supported by National Science Foundation grant IOS-1755051.
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Birds were captured under VDGIF (050352) and USFWS (MB158404-1) permits. Experimental procedures were approved by Virginia Tech’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee.
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Weitzman, C.L., Thomason, C., Schuler, E.J.A. et al. House finches with high coccidia burdens experience more severe experimental Mycoplasma gallisepticum infections. Parasitol Res 119, 3535–3539 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-020-06814-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-020-06814-0